


Jaquemart XIII - The Other Side of the Night

by alanharnum



Series: Jaquemart [18]
Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:55:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13173123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum





	Jaquemart XIII - The Other Side of the Night

JAQUEMART  
by  
Alan Harnum

Utena and its characters belongs to Be-PaPas, Chiho Saito,   
Shogakukan, Shokaku Iinkai and TV Tokyo.

This copy of the story is from my Archive of Our Own page at http://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum.

 

XIII. The Other Side of the Night

* * *

Spring was. Spring was rain: heavy rain, like buckets poured  
from the sky; soft rain, drifting as much as falling, bedewing  
skin and hair. Spring was mist, rising on the harbour like a  
mountain sailing in from the sea, piled on the green hills in  
the early morning when you stuck your sleepy head out of the  
tent, and there was Anthy already cooking breakfast, and you  
said, "Anthy, it was my turn to cook this morning", trying to  
sound annoyed, but knowing that this was just the way things  
were, because she was an early riser and you weren't. Spring  
was rain, spring was standing on the tiny balcony of the   
apartment in a tank-top and letting the rain run down you,  
feeling yourself become clean, almost unspeakably clean, as  
though you'd stood naked in the pouring rain for your entire  
life. Spring was coloured flowers in concrete basins lining  
grey streets. Spring was sleeping with the bedroom window open  
so the two of you could hide under the covers from the cool night  
air. 

Spring was lying in the shade of a tree with Wakaba, hands  
clasped behind your head and ankles crossed, staring up at the  
leaves as they budded and returned, and thinking: though I cannot   
perceive it, though my eyes are not such that they may perceive  
it, I am witnessing regrowth, rebirth. Spring was Wakaba's  
lunches in their neat little boxes with their neat little  
compartments: rice balls wrapped in chewy nori seaweed, Vienna   
sausages cut into cute little octopi, tamago-yaki omelette rolls;  
chopped vegetables and sprigs of parsley to add colour. Spring  
was the scent of new grass that stained cleats and soccer shorts,  
whose stains would not disappear entirely no matter how many   
times the clothes were washed.

Spring was flowers whose names you didn't always know,   
bursting into bloom, and you pointed, naming the ones you could:   
rose, lily, lotus, daisy, forget-me-not, geranium, petunia,   
pansy, poppy...

Big scarlet poppies. Pink stamens, bloody petals. The  
thick spicy scent of them filling the air, nearly overpowering.  
A smell so vivid you could nearly see it, shimmering before your  
eyes in rolling red waves; so red it was a caress, stroking her   
body. Crimson fingers, moving up from her feet: this little  
piggy went to market... ankles, calves, thighs, hips, ribs,   
breasts, arms, tracing a silhouette.

Overhead, white clouds hung in long lazy lines,   
crosshatching a painfully blue sky. They drifted slowly,   
evenly, precisely; an ivory net, floating on an azure sea. Soft  
flowers were her bed. Red poppies, all around. A blushing   
blossom. She sat up slowly, shaking her head, feeling woozy and   
ill-balanced. Go to sleep, the voice had commanded, becoming   
more real with each statement, even as her own voice blurred, a   
dissolving dream. And she had, like a good child at a parent's   
behest. But not here; not in a field of poppies, soporific,   
arrayed in a labyrinth upon a field of green grass. A maze for   
ants or mice.

She put her hands flat on the ground, heedlessly crushing  
poppies beneath her palms. It helped to steady her. Where was  
she? Ohtori. She oriented herself by the tall central spire,   
and frowned. She was, if she judged correctly, where Kanae  
Memorial Hall should have been. Where Nemuro Memorial Hall had  
stood. Still shaky, she stood up on legs that believed remaining   
on the ground was a better plan; her mind and will won the vote,  
however. One step, then another, each one making her feel   
stronger and more substantial.

The sky, the sky, the spring sky, the terrible hungry spring  
sky. Why wasn't it winter? There should have been cold and snow  
and naked trees. And night. Not green grass, red poppies, blue   
sky, fat yellow sun; not the scent of flowers and freshly-turned  
earth.

Okay, yes, and on top of that, there should have been a  
Memorial Hall (of some sort, she was sure of that) where she was  
standing. No--sitting. Damn legs. She stared at them sourly.  
They'd always been good legs before this. Excellent legs, in  
fact. Long, smooth, shapely. Nice red socks. Cute little   
shoes. Tight red shorts.

"The hell?" she said. She raised an arm and peered at her  
sleeve. It was black. She groaned faintly; she was in a   
misplaced poppy field in the wrong season wearing her old   
uniform. And all her friends were missing. Everybody, in fact,  
was missing.

She flopped back down amidst the poppies and stared at the  
sky. The languid drift of clouds. There was one that looked  
like a rabbit and there was one that looked like castle, and  
there, there was one like a cat...

In the winter, sometimes, she liked to lie under the covers  
long after she woke up, even though she hated the   
irresponsibility of it. Get up, she would urge herself--but the  
simple pleasure of the warmth was too much a temptation. Anthy  
would usually be the one to poke her awake. Breakfast is ready,  
Utena.

"...breakfast is ready, Utena..."

What the hell was she doing? She threw herself up, ran a  
few steps; stumbled, as her legs gave out, and fell face-first  
into the poppies. Eyelids heavy and vision blurring, she came to  
her knees spitting petals, with the taste of the red flowers in  
her mouth. Anthy's voice--she'd heard Anthy's voice. Nearby.

"Anthy..."

Tired, so tired, you're so very tired, just go to sleep, go  
to sleep amidst all the pretty flowers, the pretty flowers love  
you, the pretty flowers will keep you safe, pretty, pretty  
flowers, they will cover you over, they will feed you nectar such  
as the gods drink, they will garb you in sweet, shining raiment  
as kings and queens wear, you shall eat of their petals as though  
they were ambrosia, as though they were manna, you shall know   
neither hunger nor thirst.

"Help me..."

But there wasn't any help to come. No prince on a white   
horse. No hand she could grasp that would pull her up. Only  
herself. And wasn't that how it always went, in the end?

But this was not the end, she thought, and she forced  
herself to stand. Her shoes smashed poppies into paste; each  
tread of her feet sent the smell of their pollen up into the air  
in an almost visible cloud. Overpowering sweetness, like the  
concession stands at the fairground. Cotton candy and frying  
dough. One, two, three; clenched fists, clenched teeth, eyes  
squeezed closed and filled with tears. Each step seven leagues   
in lead boots.

Eventually, her legs gave out again, and she toppled forward  
onto sweet green spring grass. Clover in it. A beautiful smell.  
Pure. She breathed it in, sighed; invigorated. Behind her lay a  
bed of crushed and mangled poppies, with the shapings of her body  
impressed upon it. Poppy angels, she thought, and laughed. Sit  
up, stand up, and look around. Ohtori in springtime, empty of  
people, with a poppy garden where a memorial hall should have   
been. Or maybe, just maybe, the memorial hall had stood where the  
poppy garden should have been.

The wind blew past her, towards the forest, and she turned  
her head, following it; by that she saw that the forest was no  
more. She'd seen pictures of clearcutting; what had been done to  
the forest made clearcutting look Zen gardening. As though a god  
had reached down with a scythe and laid reaping strokes across   
the forest, the hillside was furrowed and torn, littered with  
splintered trunks and jagged stumps. No hidden things--duel  
arenas or bell-towers--lay revealed by the devastation. Only  
raped earth and shattered pines. Disturbed and slightly   
sickened--not liking to feel that way at the sight, but feeling  
that way all the same--she turned her face away and began to   
walk towards the Chairman's Tower. This was very obviously more  
illusion, for winter did not so abruptly become spring, and   
memorial halls didn't transform into poppies. But illusions  
could be broken, just like lies could be seen through, and the   
light of truth let in.

Spring was abundant, and everywhere. Wildflowers, fragrant  
grass bedewed. There were swallows building nests in the trees,  
squirrels scampering across the lawn. And the scent of the sea,  
blown in from the coast on the soft wind. But nothing human,  
excepting her. She considered calling out the names of her  
friends, but decided that listening to her own voice echo back  
would simply be too cliched, and walked on. The uniform was a  
perfect fit, even though she wasn't fourteen years old any more.  
Of course, since this was all illusion...

Or a dream. Maybe she was dreaming, lying asleep on the  
floor of Kozue's gallery in Kanae's hall. They were all asleep,  
dreaming separate dreams: Miki dreaming of his shining thing,  
Juri dreaming of miracles, Nanami dreaming... whatever it was  
Nanami would dream of...

And why was she dreaming a dead unpeopled land? Some   
solipsistic wish on the part of her unconscious? A desire to be   
the Most Important Person In the World? She had enjoyed being  
the centre of attention in school, after all.

She laughed softly, as the tower loomed up ahead in the   
distance. Whatever this was, it was surely no dream. No dream   
could be so vivid. Some trap, surely, crafted in the star-filled  
heart of the planetarium projector, cast upon the screen of her  
mind. The pleasant spring to make her lazy. Anthy's voice to   
tempt her.

Anthy...

"Anthy?" she called. It echoed in the stillness. I knew it,  
she thought; how cliched. She turned, followed the path of the  
sun with her footsteps, passed through archway shadows, by a row  
of pillars white as the belly of the moon, and found herself   
before the campanula-birdcage shape of the greenhouse.

"And you are the beautiful little bird which lives here."

She remembered Touga saying that about this place, long long  
ago, and how it had chilled her to the bone to overhear. Perhaps  
he'd meant her to overhear it, had only spoken to Anthy in such a  
way because he knew she was listening. Perhaps not. It was too  
hard to tell with him, what was truth, what was lies; what the  
real meaning behind any act was.

What, she thought, is a greenhouse? A greenhouse is the   
ideal place to grow roses. A greenhouse is open to the light but  
shielded from the elements. There is a door by which to enter,  
but you must have the key. You must enter by the door. If you  
try and force you way in, you will cut yourself upon the glass;  
you will make a hole in the greenhouse, and snow and wind will  
enter to ruin the roses. 

There were roses inside, of course, thick bushes full of   
them; rose upon roses, roses of all the world. Roses in colours   
Nature never sought for them. Roses in full bloom, roses whose   
petals remained clasped around their secret hearts.

She took the key from her pocket. It was carved of ivory  
and of horn, and fit the lock perfectly. But once she had turned   
it and unlocked the door, she could not turn it back the other   
way and remove it. Could this key open only one door at a time?   
That seemed neither fair nor efficient. After a moment, though,  
she shrugged; if that was the way it was, then that was the way  
it was. She stepped inside and reached back to pull the door  
closed behind her, then thought better of it--let the spring air  
come in a little. The scent of the surrounding roses was subtle,  
never cloying; the greenhouse looked much the same as it did when  
Anthy had been its caretaker. She wondered who cared for it  
these days. Or if it was cared for at all. This was not the  
real world, after all, vital and fresh as spring rain though it  
might seem to be. Perhaps the greenhouse in the real world was a  
cracked thing, broken glass and wilted bushes and dusty panes.  
But, no, she thought--that would not fit in with Ohtori's decor;  
it would be a hole in the mask through which one might see the  
white-gleaming skull. The garden remained undoubtedly beautiful,  
because that was how Akio would wish it to be.

There was a steel-coloured rose in her hands. She stared at  
it, and tried to remember when and why she had broken its stem   
and plucked it from the bush.

Someone coughed lightly behind her, accompanied by a   
jingling of small bells. She turned quickly, dropping the rose  
to the floor as she did.

"Please don't," the boy asked quietly, holding his watering-  
can before him like a shield.

"Don't what?" Utena asked, wary but unworried. The boy was  
small and pale; beneath lank dark hair, his face was open and  
friendly, with a smattering of freckles. He wore a white-and-  
grey jester's motley. Tiny silver bells had been sewn in long  
swathes along the surface of fabric, and even a minute movement  
was accompanied by their ringing.

"The roses," he said. "Don't pick them." He gestured with  
his watering-can at the one she'd dropped. "Once a rose is  
plucked, it never grows any more, and it begins to die."

"Roses all die anyway, in the end," Utena murmured, stooping  
to retrieve the grey rose.

"Even if that's so," the boy said, suddenly sounding a   
little annoyed, "that doesn't mean you've got the right to pluck  
them before their time, now does it?"

"No," Utena admitted, shamed. "I'm sorry."

He nodded, the annoyance vanishing instantly; he was all  
smiles again. "It's all right. It's only one rose, after all.  
Perhaps I'll dry it and put it in a vase. Dried roses are quite  
lovely, in their own way; they give off a wonderful fragrance,  
and, with care, they'll last as long as you do."

"Only that long?"

The boy moved past her to water one of the smaller bushes.  
"Would you like to hear a story about roses?"

"I already know stories about roses." Utena stared at the  
rose in her hands; then, for want of anything better to do, she  
began to strip the thorns from it. "Too many damn stories about  
roses."

"I bet you don't know this one," the boy said. "It's pretty  
short. Once upon a time there was a gardener, who worked for the  
richest family in the land. He grew roses more beautiful than  
anyone had ever seen. They were all the colours of the rainbow,  
and they twined up the white walls of the family's mansion like  
ivy. Even in the winter, they didn't die, so the house was  
always festooned with colour. The daughter of the family fell in  
love with the gardener because of the beauty of his roses, and  
they became lovers. They would meet by the light of the full  
moon behind his small shack. But one day the girl's brother saw   
them kissing, and ran to tell his father. Since it was entirely  
inappropriate that the daughter of a rich family should love a  
mere gardener, the father and his son called the gardener before  
them in secret, struck off his head with a sword, and buried him  
in the garden he had so loved. That night, as the family slept,  
the roses began to tighten around the house, until they had  
clenched it as a fist clenches around the hilt of a sword. Then,  
with a great crash, they pulled it to the ground, and all within  
were killed."

"Even the daughter?" Utena asked after a moment.

The boy thought about it for a moment, absently staring up  
at the glass ceiling of the greenhouse as he moved the watering-  
can around over the bush. "Yes," he said finally. "Even her."

"Doesn't seem fair." She finished stripping the thorns, and  
tucked the rose into her breast pocket. "I mean, she did love   
the gardener."

"I suppose the roses didn't care, or didn't know," the boy  
said, somewhat defensively. "And, really, haven't you learned by  
now that the endings of stories are very seldom fair?"

Utena had nothing to say to that. "What's your name?"  
she asked after the silence had become too uncomfortable to bear.

"What's yours?"

"I asked you first."

The boy shrugged. "I suppose we'll have to go without  
knowing each other's names, then."

She laughed. "Bit of a brat, aren't you?"

He shrugged again. The bells tinkled almost mockingly, and  
then he moved on to another bush with his watering-can. "It's  
not the first time I've been called one," he said distantly.

"You ought to respect your elders," she said, a teasing note  
in it. The boy was a brat, obviously, but there was something  
likeable about him. Even if he were just an illusion in a dream.

Laughter answered her, but it wasn't hers or the boy's, but   
a deep, cold, resonant sound, as though heard underwater, devoid   
of humour or any true kind of merriment. It was familiar but  
unplaceable, irritatingly so; like a name caught on the tip of   
her tongue.

She turned in the direction of it. The Knight of Pentacles   
was standing just beyond the open doorway, a tall cloaked shape   
in monochrome with a hidden face and an unsheathed katana. "He   
is your elder," the Knight said as his laughter trailed away.   
"Your elder by far. What you see is not what you see."

Utena's eyes narrowed, and she moved so that she stood in  
the path the Knight would have to take to the boy. "You're  
supposed to stay down when you get thrown out a window," she  
said coldly. This was one she could hate with ease; he'd tried  
to kill Wakaba. She wondered if she would kill him, if she  
could; she decided that she did not mind finding out, if she had  
to. Her body felt tense as a violin string, ready to sing out in  
a beautiful grace of violence if plucked. Step through the  
doorway, she thought viciously; step over the threshold and I  
shall show you that of which I am made. "But since this is just  
a dream, I suppose it's perfectly understandable that you're  
showing up."

The Knight laughed again. "A dream!" he crowed. "Tenjou,  
Tenjou, just as before, you're still the a fool, prodded by the   
stick, led by the carrot, pulled one way and then the other; the  
blind woman at the eye of the hurricane. Everyone has their  
strings in you, and you don't even see them." His voice dropped  
low and cold, suddenly, full of something she could not call hate  
only because it lacked entirely in any kind of fire. "I would  
have pitied you, once, but I am not as I was; I have been down  
into the sunless country, to the land where the stars are   
strange. Shall I name you the constellations of those lands?  
They are called the Skull, the Femur, the Rib... I have wandered  
in the caves along the shore of the dark sea, and heard the  
mermaids chanting their threnodies; their hair is long and black  
and silky, but underneath their skins they are bone, all white   
bone... I have seen wonders such as the eyes of men were not  
meant to see, have walked at the sides of angels and devils--"

"That's great," Utena interrupted. "But who are you?"

There was suddenly a sense of disjunction in him, of a   
ripple like the movement of a stage curtain passing through his  
body. His form flickered--white to black, black to white, like  
a photo and its negative--then steadied. And he laughed again,  
brusquely. "Don't you know by now?" he snarled, sounding almost  
insulted. "Process of elimination alone--"

Then he shook his head and said, almost sadly, "Of course  
not, of course, you can't see, you can't see the whole thing like  
I can, all of it, from every beginning to every ending, so..."

"Who are you?" she asked again, and stood silently waiting  
for him to reply. 

"Pay him no mind," the boy said quietly, but it cut through  
the heavy silence and made her jump with surprise; she'd almost  
forgotten he was there. "He can't come into this garden. It's  
forbidden. Forbidden to a _thing_ such as him."

She whirled on the boy. "A thing?" she asked, confused and  
somehow angered at the contemptuous hatred in the boy's voice.   
"He--"

"Is not as he once was," the boy said bleakly. "You aren't  
supposed to come back like that."

"I wasn't given a choice in the matter," the Knight said   
coldly, and Utena turned back to him. He had sheathed his blade   
at his side, and looked almost relaxed. "And yet all the same, I  
have come back, and I am now what I am. And I know that it is   
not as I was, but do not care."

"What is it you want this time?" she asked. 

"Want is not a thing I am much possessed of," he answered  
stonily. "It requires hope." Suddenly he laughed again,   
terrible to hear. "Should you see my lady before I do, tell her,  
let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she shall come."

He turned and began to stride away, cloak flowing behind   
him. Utena moved to pursue him; she took one step, heard the   
clatter of a watering-can falling to the ground, and then small  
hands seized her from behind by the wrists. Their strength was  
irresistible, shockingly incongruous to such a small, pale,  
sickly-looking boy.

"He will kill you if you leave this garden," the boy said  
softly, his breath cool against the side of her face. "And do   
not doubt that you can die in this place."

"Let me go, damn it!" She jerked forward, but the boy did  
not move an inch with her--he seemed rooted like a tree to the  
floor of the greenhouse--and she succeeded only in painfully  
jolting her arms. "Your lady?" she called, though the Knight had  
already moved out of sight. "Who? Who do you mean?"

"To escape time by hiding in precious memories is one   
thing," the boy said. His voice was gentle, and almost kind, but   
he would not release her. "To come back from death is quite   
another. The waters are dark and hungry, and at their bottoms  
one sees things that should not be brought back."

"Death..." she murmured, and ceased struggling. The boy let  
her go, and she hunched over, back to him, rubbing her sore   
wrists. "Who is he?"

"He is the Knight of Pentacles now. That is all."

Utena thought about it briefly. Process of elimination?   
There were other worlds, other versions of herself and everyone  
she knew and loved and hated in this world. Who could possibly   
be eliminated, if she were only to accept that the other worlds  
might not only be seen, but left and entered?

"The dead pass out of memory quickly, for it is their way."  
The boy's voice seemed deeper, sadder, and she somehow got the   
impression that he was taller. He moved, and bells sang with  
his movement. A hand fell softly onto her shoulder, broad and  
powerful. "Even now, you don't often think of your parents, do  
you?"

"No," she admitted after a moment, closing her eyes. "Not  
very often. They--" She stopped herself, and pulled away from  
him. 

He was the same small, pallid boy he had been before,   
holding his watering-can. "They what?"

"Their graves are here," she said after some hesitation.   
"In this city, I mean. I've been here for a few days, but I  
haven't gone to visit them."

His smile was suddenly sad, and it made him look much older.  
"Have you ever thought about why people visit graves?"

She shook her head. "Not really. It's just sort of a  
traditional thing to do, isn't it?"

"I think it's all about memory," the boy declared.   
"Although sometimes I think that it might be that the dead are  
hungry, and every time you visit a grave, you're shortening your  
own life."

Utena shuddered. "That's horrible," she muttered.

"Yes," the boy stated. He moved a few steps away from her  
and began to pay attention with his watering-can to yet another  
rose bush. "Speaking of parents, do you know what the duty of  
children is?"

"No," she said, somewhat apologetically. "It's another  
thing I've never really thought about much."

"It's to bear the burdens of their parents, whatever those  
may be," the boy said distantly. The watering-can chose to run  
out of water at that point; he frowned, and shook it to get the  
last few drops out, causing the bells sewn along his sleeve to  
jangle discordantly. "However heavy."

"Sounds rough," Utena said sympathetically. "My parents  
died when I was very young, so..." She trailed off with a sigh.  
"Where are your parents?"

"My watering-can's empty. Could you go fill it for me at  
the tap outside?" the boy asked, turning, taking a step forward,  
and presenting the slender-necked copper watering-can to her.

"Sure," she said absently, taking it from his hands and  
heading out of the greenhouse. The spring grass was withered and  
blackened with the marks of footprints wherever the Knight had   
walked, as though his very movements were a contagion. 

But first she had to fill the watering-can. At the sink,  
she opened the hinged lid, then turned the tap, having to put a  
little muscle behind it to get it to move. Water began to   
gurgle from the spout, splashing against the bottom of the stone  
basin. She filled the can nearly brim-full, closed the lid, and  
headed back to the greenhouse, resolving to question the boy  
further about the Knight. He seemed to know many things; there  
was an old sadness in his eyes that made her think the Knight had  
spoken some part of the truth: he was her elder by far.

One moves, she thought absently, through a dream accepting  
things as givens that one would not accept when waking. Thus do  
I focus so resolutely upon the filling of a watering-can when the  
lives of my friends may be in danger. Thus does the watering-can  
become the world.

"Hello?" she called, stepping back into the greenhouse.  
"Hey, I brought the watering can back." She frowned. "Hey,   
kid?"

There was no answer. He was gone, as a quick comb through  
the greenhouse confirmed. She put the watering-can down near a  
bush, her frown deepening, and called once again, "Hey, kid!"

Maybe he was never really here at all, she thought. Then  
she heard a distant shudder of silver bells, overcome a second  
later by the deep voices of greater ones. And then, in between  
each peal, in the echo as the booming clangour died away:

utena-sama

utena-sama

utena-sama

utena-sama

Swiftly, she left the greenhouse, left behind earth and  
watering-can and long-thorned grey rose, and strode towards the  
tower and the emanations of the bells.

* * *

The car ran driverless through the winter night, a horse without  
a rider. Rimes of frost rimmed the frame. High beams cut at the  
darkness like swords. Rivers rose before it, and bridges   
appeared that it might cross. Walls of fire appeared, and were  
doused by flurries of snow.

The radio came tinnily to life.

o/` Stars fading but I linger on dear  
o/` Still craving your kiss  
o/` I'm longing to linger till dawn dear  
o/` Just saying this

Walls of fire appeared, and were doused by flurries of snow.  
Rivers rose before it, and bridges appeared that it might cross.  
High beams cut at the darkness like swords. Rimes of frost  
rimmed the frame. A horse without a rider, the car ran   
driverless through the winter night.

o/` Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you  
o/` Sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you  
o/` But in your dreams whatever they be  
o/` Dream a little dream of me 

And, just as quickly, died.

The car ran circles in the night, radio snapping on and off  
in a pattern as predictable as the signal from a lighthouse.

* * *

The white doors stood before her; blue and yellow swathes and   
thin black lines defined the rose upon it. The special elevator,  
leading from the base of the spire to the chairman's quarters.   
There was a small numerical pad beside it. You needed a pass   
code. She remembered Anthy telling it to her, slowly and   
carefully. Having her repeat it. It wouldn't do to have you   
locked out in the night, Utena-sama.

It would, of course, be the same. Even after seven years.  
Even in a phantom land. She keyed it in, and the doors chimed,   
then gaped open, revealing red walls. They closed again as soon  
as she had stepped inside. The chime again, and the elevator  
began to rise, riding the spine of the spire as smoothly as a  
water droplet sliding down glass. Perhaps foolishly, she felt no  
apprehension of any kind, even though it was perfectly possible  
that the elevator could suddenly jerk to a halt and go plunging  
down the shaft, carrying her down to her doom. But this was just  
a dream, wasn't it? Or an illusion, a phantasm--something   
unreal. Something outside reality. It couldn't hurt her.

She chuckled bitterly as her scar throbbed. That had been  
real, at least. Anthy had gotten that sword from somewhere. And  
if that sword had been real, why not all those other swords? All   
one million of them. Should not there be scars from them, as   
well? If they had been real. If any of it had been real. Some  
of it had to have been; she remembered Anthy plunging down in her  
coffin, into those crimson clouds. Had that merely been Anthy  
riding down the tower in the elevator, with mask upon mask woven  
over it? No--no, the heart cried out against it. It had to have  
been something more than that, something deeper; to have it all   
as mere illusion was far too unfair.

The petulant thought made her think of a scrap of poetry  
she'd read once. A man says to the universe: "Sir, I exist!"  
And the universe shoots back: "However, the fact has not created  
in me a sense of obligation."

Fairness. A sweet, silly concept. Like nobility, truth.  
Love. Oh, she thought suddenly, shamefully, oh, I do not want to  
think these things. The elevator continued its ascent in   
silence, and she realized that she hadn't even pushed the button  
for the chairman's office. Up, up, and up. Such a very long   
time this journey took.

She reached down to check the sword at her side. Her   
fingers settled comfortably around the reassuring weight of the  
cool metal hilt. A good blade; she was thankful she'd brought it  
with her. There was no way of knowing what awaited her at the   
top. At her breast was a grey rose, heavy as lead; in her hand  
was a sword, light as a feather.

The elevator kept on going up, and Utena kept on waiting.  
Soon enough, she thought; soon enough. Soon enough for what?  
That didn't matter. There was her hand, on the hilt of a blade,  
and there was whatever lurked above. 

"Please begin, Tenjou-san."

She nodded, and sat down in the stool, thoughtfully provided  
for guests in the elevator. It was, after all, a very long ride.  
The mirrored doors cast her image back at her, like the sea  
returning driftwood to the shore: smoothed, polished, more  
beautiful. Burnished gold, shining silver, glossy black.

"Where do I start?" She drew her sword from her sheath and  
held it across her knees; her double in the mirror did the same.

"Wherever you'd like to begin is just fine."

Faintly, she smiled. "I guess it starts with Himemiya. I  
didn't realize it until right near the end, but it wasn't a   
prince who really inspired me to try and have a noble heart; it  
was Himemiya. When I saw her suffering like that, I wanted to  
save her. Because no matter what she'd done, it wasn't right  
that she should have to suffer like that. It isn't right that  
anyone should have to suffer like that, whatever it is they've  
done."

"Then you don't believe that people should be punished for  
their crimes."

"I didn't say that," she replied softly, trying not to sound  
defensive. "But it's wrong that people should ever have to pay  
forever, for anything."

"Then you believe that everything can be forgiven."

"Stop telling me what I believe!" she snapped. The elevator  
shivered at her voice, and the mirror darkened briefly, casting  
her doppelganger into shadow. "Are you saying I was wrong, to  
want to save Himemiya? Are you saying that what she did was so  
terrible that she deserved to suffer like that?"

"Tell me more about Himemiya."

The faint smile came again. Just thinking of Himemiya made  
her feel calm. Peaceful. "The next time I saw Himemiya, I   
didn't remember that we'd met before. My first impression... I  
didn't think much of her. Any girl who'd just sit there and let  
her boyfriend yell at her like that. But then, when Saionji hit  
her... it made me mad. Not just because nobody should treat a  
girl like that, but because she just took it as though it was  
proper. I wanted to yell at her for being weak, and I wanted to  
protect her from him at the same time. If Touga hadn't shown up  
when he did... I don't know. Maybe I would have run down there.  
Maybe not."

The distant, metallic sound of gears ratcheting together   
reached her ears. Some mechanism of the elevator, briefly loud  
enough to hear, quickly fading. She went on talking.

"Later, as I got to know her better, and as I found out all  
the strange things at this school... about her being the Rose  
Bride... I wanted to change her. Show her that the way she was  
living her life wasn't right. Maybe that was wrong of me. But  
it seemed to work, at first. Then Touga showed me the truth;  
Himemiya had only been changing her personality to fit the wish  
in my heart. So, I was really just being selfish, forcing her  
to become another person because I didn't like the one she was.  
It wasn't just being the Rose Bride--I really thought in those  
days that if someone was quiet and didn't have a lot of friends,  
it probably meant that something was wrong with them. I couldn't  
understand that some people might be happy being alone with their  
own thoughts, because I always loved being the centre of   
attention so much."

The elevator began to climb faster; the sudden jump of speed  
made her stomach roll, and she briefly tightened her grip on the  
sword hilt until the hilt dug painfully into her palm.

"As it turned out, of course, there were a lot of things  
wrong for Himemiya. But after I realized that she would change  
herself according to my wishes... I gave up trying to change her,  
at least consciously. I just tried to be there for her, to be  
her friend. To accept her." She paused in thought, then sighed  
deeply. "I'm not sure if that was such a good idea, now."

"There's something you're not telling me."

"Am I required to tell you everything?"

"You claim it's all about her, then."

"No." She took a deep breath. "It was around that time   
that I met Himemiya's brother. Akio-san. At first, it was sort  
of what I imagined having an older brother might be like. We'd  
talk about things that troubled me, and he always seemed to have  
such good advice. He was much older than me, and he had a   
fiancee. It would have... it would have been silly to hope for  
anything, I thought."

"Interesting. 'To hope for anything'. Please continue."

Something ground loudly beneath the red-carpeted floor of   
the elevator. Steel moving on steel. Another stomach-flipping  
speed increase.

"Later on, when he suggested Himemiya and I move in with  
him, I fooled myself into thinking it was proper. I was good at  
that, back then--at seeing what I wanted to see and hearing what  
I wanted to hear. But I wasn't really surprised the first time  
he kissed me, and I wasn't unhappy, either. I began, like a   
fool, to believe that he had real feelings for me. I should have  
felt terrible, because he was engaged to Kanae-san, but I   
didn't."

"Tell me about her."

"Kanae-san seemed like a nice person. But I think I hated  
her a little, just because it seemed as though everything was so  
easy for her. She was rich and had both her parents and had such  
a handsome fiancee. It was terrible of me, but one of the things  
I thought when Akio-san first kissed me was, 'Wouldn't it hurt  
Kanae-san to see this?' But that didn't make me feel as bad as I  
thought it would. A part of me was happy."

"You believe yourself to be a wicked person, at heart."

She nodded. "That's one of the things I'm afraid of," she  
whispered. "When we played badminton together, Juri-sempai  
talked about how she'd only been thinking of herself all along.   
She seemed to imply that I was the only one who hadn't been doing   
that, but I don't know. Wasn't I just in it for myself, wanting  
to play make-believe prince and not really caring as much about  
Himemiya as I should have?"

In the mirror, her reflection was weeping, silently.

"Go back a little. I think there's more you want to say  
about Ohtori Kanae."

"I think she knew what kind of man Akio was. But she didn't  
let herself see. Or she did see, but kept up the engagement  
anyway. Maybe she didn't have a choice. I think she was just an  
innocent person, caught up in something she didn't understand.  
Touga said Akio-san might have poisoned her, but I don't see why  
he would do that."

"You think you could have avoided falling in love with   
Ohtori Akio."

She unconsciously smoothed the white fabric of her dress.  
It was awkward, to sit on a hard wooden stool in such a long,   
wide skirt. "I don't know. Love isn't something you can just  
turn on and off, is it? Look at Nanami. She's having all kinds  
of problems because she's telling herself she shouldn't love  
Touga any more because he isn't really her brother by blood and   
because he's done some terrible things, but you can't just make   
yourself stop loving someone like that. So she's all confused   
inside, and Touga doesn't know what to do either; I think they're  
both going to get hurt, in the end."

"You keep on mentioning Touga's name, but only in passing.  
Tell me about him. How you feel about him."

"I don't know." She reached down and tugged up one red sock  
which had bunched itself at her ankle. "I really don't know how   
I feel about him at all. I guess I'm all confused too; I guess  
I'm really not much better than Nanami."

"Tell me about her."

Her mirror image smiled, even as the tears ran down her  
face. "It's funny. We didn't get along in school at all, and  
even now we have lots of arguments. And she can be really weird  
sometimes. But in a way, I feel closer to her than I do to Juri-  
sempai or Shiori-san. Maybe it's because part of her reminds me  
of Himemiya, because of her older brother, and part of her   
reminds me of me, because she had this guy she believed in so  
faithfully, and he turned out not to be worth believing in. I  
wish I'd listened to her more carefully, near the end. Maybe   
things would have turned out differently if I had."

"Let's go back to Himemiya Anthy. You love her."

"Yeah," Utena said after a moment. "Yeah, I do. I think I  
love her more than anyone else. But I'm not sure what kind of a  
love it is. I remember sempai asking me about it, and I couldn't  
get my answer straight. I don't think that it's the same kind of  
love that sempai has for Shiori-san, but at the same time, it's  
something different from the love between very good friends. I  
guess in the end, I really don't know."

"And you love Ohtori Akio."

"No!" She took a deep, shuddering breath. "No, I don't.  
Not any more. He wasn't any of the things he pretended to be.  
He lied to me and used me, and he wouldn't do a thing to save  
Himemiya. I hate him. I hate him more than anyone else."

"But you yourself said that love isn't something you can   
just turn on and off."

"I don't love him!" she yelled, and the left side of the  
mirror cracked. The elevator quivered, halted; then, with a lurch,  
it began to drop.

"Then kill him."

"I--"

"You want him dead, but you don't want to do it yourself."

"No. I--"

The elevator shook, and she was pitched off the stool and  
into the back wall, hard. The wind of their descent was   
screaming in her ears. The cables had snapped; death came. Such  
a long, long fall.

"What is it you really want?"

"I don't want him to die," she sobbed, burying her face in  
her hands, crumpled against the padded red wall. "Why couldn't  
he have been good?" she whispered in a tiny, broken voice. "Why  
couldn't he have been what I wanted? I hate him; I hate him so   
much. But I don't want him to die. I want--"

The elevator jerked to a halt, so quickly she was hurled to  
the floor by the inertia, avoiding hitting her head only by  
catching herself painfully on her forearms.

"You want?"

"I want to help him," she whispered, ashamed. "I mean...  
even if I couldn't become a prince, in the end, didn't I do  
enough? Didn't I help Anthy find herself, and leave him?"

"You think you didn't become a prince?"

"I didn't. If I did... why did things turn out that way?   
With me unhappy and all these terrible things... I know what   
Akio-san and Akino Akami said, but they were just trying to trick  
me."

"You know what they say. The prince people hold inside   
their hearts is like a snowflake. Everyone has one. Everyone   
has a different one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she murmured, getting   
painfully to her feet. Her shoelace had come untied, and she  
knelt to fix it. 

Her reflection smiled enigmatically, then tore into two and   
vanished as the elevator doors opened. Utena walked out, sword   
in hand, into the nave of the bell-tower.

All the windows were broken. Some from without, so that   
slivers and fragments of stained glass littered the wooden floor,   
and some from within. The windows were broken, every one of   
them, and the light was flooding in, trapping dust motes in its   
beams and being trapped in the colourful, shattered remains of   
the windows.

Though the light came in, it was still not enough. The   
ropes hung and swayed in the wind blowing in through the broken   
windows, and went up, up, up, fading first into shadow, then into  
impenetrable darkness, impossibly high.

A floorboard squeaked beneath her, and she started, then  
shook her head and took a deep breath. She felt oddly at peace.  
The long, strange ride in the elevator had been cathartic. Some  
gift, perhaps, offered freely. A lens through which to see  
herself.

Or a trap, to draw her in, make her lower her guard, make  
her vulnerable. She tightened her grip on the sword, not caring  
where it had come from, caring merely that she had a weapon with  
which to fight.

"Come out, come out," she whispered. A shuffle of feet   
behind her made her spin, sword held out to thrust or slash.

A figure in white emerged from a thick cluster of hanging  
ropes, pushing them aside with long-fingered pale-gloved hands.   
His cape was tattered, his gentle dark face smudged with soot.   
There were holes in his boots, and his eyes were wild and dark-  
circled. Prince Dios, but lacking severely in princely elegance.  
Dried blood stained his left side, and he walked with a limp.

She leveled the sword at him. "Hold it."

Dios paused, then, sighing, slumped down to the wooden floor  
in a loose sprawling sit. "Please put your sword away, little   
one," he said, in a soft voice that made her want to hurl the   
horrible hurtful sword away and rush to him, cradle his wounded  
body in her arms, lay his weary head in her lap and stroke his   
hair and tell him, "Don't worry. Rest now."

She gritted her teeth and held on to the sword. "How many  
times do you think you can fool me with this, Akio?" she asked  
softly. Sadly, even.

Dios laughed, softly, a tinkling of silver bells. "Come sit  
beside me," he enticed. "Bring the sword if you wish. I won't  
hurt you, child."

"I'm not a child any more," she replied bleakly, not moving.

"To me you are," Dios murmured. "It's all relative. You  
don't need to sit down beside me. We can talk just as we are."   
He sighed gently and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his  
half-crossed legs. "Do you understand what this place is?"

She took a moment to reply, guardedly. "No," she admitted.  
"Last time I was here, I looked out a window and saw another   
world. But all the windows are broken now."

"Have you looked out of one yet?"

"I'm not turning my back on you." But, all the same, she  
moved over to the nearest broken window, keeping a watch on him  
out of the corner of her eye. A quick glance showed her a   
rolling, blazing, red chaotic sea (or sky) beyond the confines of  
the bell-tower. Very faintly, she heard what sounded like a low,  
droning voice, as the crimson expanse surged and eddied,   
sometimes like the ocean, sometimes like a bank of drifting  
clouds.

She looked back at Dios. "So what?" she said, a little  
snidely. "Illusion or dream, you see weird things."

"You don't understand," the prince said unhappily. He  
stared at his hands. "Look at me, child. I'm very nearly dead.  
Only here, in this interstice of intersections, can I speak to   
you."

"You are dead," she murmured, looking away from him, not  
wanting him to witness the spasm of grief that passed across her  
face. "You've been dead for a long time. Centuries, at least.  
Maybe thousands of years. Maybe forever. Maybe you were never  
really real at all, except in the dreams of foolish children."

"Dead." Again, he laughed softly, and there was something  
of Akio in it, cynical and amused, amidst the childish tones.   
"That was what he said, wasn't it? But who are you going to   
believe, him or me? I certainly know whether or not I'm dead  
better than he does."

Despite herself, she chuckled softly. It turned into a sob  
after a moment, which she failed to stifle.

"Don't be afraid to cry in front of me," he said gently. "I  
won't mock you for it. I won't ever do a thing like that."

She dabbed her eyes on her sleeve and shook her head. "I  
want to believe in you," she said. "But I can't. I can't take  
that kind of risk again."

"It's all right," Dios said soothingly. He didn't sound   
angry, or even disappointed. "I understand. You're not the same  
innocent person you once were. You can't become her again.   
Once lost, innocence cannot be regained. But don't you want to  
save your friends? Don't you want to save those you love?"

She nodded, mute, tight-throated, with eyes closed against   
tears.

"Love, forgiveness, reconciliation, truth, eternity,   
miracles... these are all things that are easy to speak of with  
contempt. Being cynical about everything is easy, just as easy  
as believing things blindly. What's hard is to find a middle  
ground. Even most adults can't manage to do that."

"What are you?" she whispered, not expecting a truthful  
answer, or even one she could make sense of.

"A shadow of a shadow, in the dream of a dream." His voice  
was already growing distant, the last sweet strains of a perfect  
music. "I'm not worried, you know. I've seen your heart. You  
have strength enough to save both of them. To save everyone.  
Right now, though, you're hanging in the balance. Alas, for two  
souls burn within your breast. There's a power in both of them,  
but you have to realize it, first."

"Realize what?"

"Look at the sword."

She opened her eyes and looked at the sword. A straight  
blade. A black handle. Straight golden quillons. Suddenly, she  
cried out in disgust and fear, and flung it away from her as  
though it were a burning serpent. Its hilt bounced once on the   
wooden floor, and then it slid away into the shadows and   
vanished. She recognized it. Did not know how she had not,   
before. It had been one in a million, that blade. One of a   
million.

Shivering with terror at her own self, at the meaning behind  
this to what she had become, to what she had been and to what she  
might be, she knelt on the floor and hugged herself tightly, for   
she had no one else to embrace and no one else to embrace her.

I want to help him, she thought. And it hurt to think that,  
because she still hated him so much, and remembered with perverse  
happiness the feel of his neck within her hands. Wasn't there a  
point you could go past where you no longer could--no longer  
deserved--to be saved? How many times should you offer a hand  
only to have it slapped away? Wasn't there a point where, like a  
rabid dog or a tiger with a taste for flesh, a man, even if he   
were once a good man (even if he were once the best of men) had  
to be destroyed for the greater good? A trembling in her breast;  
the ferrous scrapery of swords; the raptor with iron wings. She   
could feel the pulse of Akio's throat against her fingers.

And she realized then what seemed in that moment a deeper   
truth than any she had ever known. She thought: what we call   
evil is actually that which we hate and fear. We call a thing  
evil because we wish to destroy it and think ourselves righteous  
for doing so. What we seek to destroy, we seek to destroy not  
because it must be destroyed, but because we wish to destroy   
something that is within ourselves. The terror of a fallen   
angel is not because he is a monster, but because he is our   
brother. 

She remembered Nanami's voice in the darkness, so quiet and  
so sad: "Perhaps the dragons of our lives are princesses who are  
only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps   
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless   
that wants help from us."

A calm came upon her then, not like the calm of a child in  
the womb, but like the calm of a ship that has weathered a   
terrible storm at sea, and, battered and with ragged sails, limps  
finally into safe harbour. She smiled, and, slowly but steadily,  
rose to her feet.

"Well", she said resignedly, "I suppose they had to  
go somewhere, didn't they?" But they had been sleeping; did   
they stir at the sight of the Prince? Of he who was once the   
prince?

To draw the swords from the Prince to herself had been the  
destiny of the Rose Bride. So Akio had said. But why had the  
swords wanted him in the first place? If they were one side of  
a balance in her, as Dios (false or true) had implied, then what  
was the other side? She certainly did have some power. There  
was power in hate, just as there was in love. 

I, she thought suddenly, am the pivot upon which these   
balanced forces turn. Light and dark, sun and shadow, love and   
hate, these all are a part of me. In their opposition there is  
union; the war within myself creates my self. I am Tenjou Utena;  
I am prince, princess, woman, girl, bearer and wielder and victim  
of swords. I will save my friends; I will save those that I   
love. If I can, if I possibly can, I will save everyone.

She turned and stepped back into the waiting elevator, to  
descend again to earth. 

* * *

I will plant the seeds of roses in your marrow, when they crack   
their shells your bones will split. The vines shall bind your   
body to the earth and I shall water you in order that you will   
never die. I will sow salt within your skin.

I shall dig at you as the spade digs at the earth, I shall  
furrow you as the plow cuts the field, I shall rake you as a  
gardener at the autumn leaves, I will flay you as though you are  
corn to thresh.

I will make a garden of your face. I will put out your eyes  
and grow lilies in the sockets, I will slit your nose and raise  
poppies in the hollow, I will cut out your tongue and daisies  
will grow between your teeth.

All this and more I will do, and I will do it to you  
forever. 

The red eyes are like wheels of fire in her mind, and each  
threat carries behind it the severe weight of power; they are not  
idle. The red eyes fill the world. The red eyes are the world.

Why, she asks, why? And she is unused to questioning such  
punishments, unused to thinking them not to be her deserving lot.

Hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate  
hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate  
hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate  
hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehateYOU!

* * *

Utena stepped calmly into the small, closet-like elevator, and  
sat down on the stool before the mirror with the shelf  
below it. The face in the mirror was entirely her own. To her  
left, about the level of her head if she'd been standing, was a   
black-winged butterfly with yellow spots, framed and frozen   
beneath glass. To her right was the grillwork of a speaker.

The elevator began a slow, palsied descent. Walls were  
high, light was dim, reflection was shadowed. She shifted on the  
uncomfortable stool, frowning. It ought, at least, to be padded.

"Is anyone there?" a male voice asked softly. It was  
familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"I am," she replied quietly. "Go ahead."

"I'm Mikage Souji, from Grade 12. Due to a special   
arrangement, I have no assigned classroom. Most of my time is  
spent in independent research and projects. They say I'm a  
genius."

Utena sat quietly. A deep calm had fallen over her like a   
bride's veil. Mikage's voice was placid, but she could sense the  
tension, the pain, in it.

"There was a girl--no, a woman. A woman now. It was a very  
long time ago. I think I was in love with her. But I don't even  
really know what love is. Do you love someone if you want to   
take her tears away forever? If seeing her sad makes you sad?  
As though every time she smiles, it's as though it's the first  
smile you've ever seen?"

"That's a kind of love," she said softly.

Over the intercom, she heard, faintly, the sound of a deep,  
quavering breath being drawn. "She had a brother. A younger  
brother. A beautiful boy. He had eternity shining in his eyes,  
like stars mirrored in the sea. But he was very ill, and had not  
long to live. I think I loved him too. I'm not sure if it was  
the same love I had for her or not. I don't know much of love.  
I'm not good at that sort of thing."

"There's something you're not saying." Where were these  
words coming from? She had no idea. Deep as instinct, deep as  
bone. "Go deeper."

The mirror turned translucent, like crystal. Mikage Souji  
sat on the other side, in an elevator identical to hers, in a   
mirror of her pose. Hands in his lap. Head bowed. Eyes closed.  
Still looking eighteen years old.

"I think that although she cared for me and appreciated the  
happiness I brought her brother, she didn't really love me. She  
loved someone else. A powerful man. I think she thought he  
could give eternity to her and let her save her brother."

He put his head in his hands and let out a quiet sigh, which  
filtered through the intercom to reach her ears. The elevator  
rumbled like the belly of a beast.

"I thought that if I could give her eternity, she would love  
me... that eternity was the sort of thing that it was just to  
obtain at any price. But now I'm starting to doubt that. She  
obviously didn't believe it." He shuddered. "I did a thing that  
some might call terrible. But it was implicit in their contract.  
And it wasn't as though they truly died..."

For a moment, she thought she could smell smoke, but then it  
was gone. 

"But I did it all for her," he whispered. "For the two of  
them. I wanted to save them both. They were both so beautiful.  
I wanted to preserve them forever, against time and death. Like  
roses under glass. Was that so wrong?"

He let out something that might have been a sob, but his   
face was hidden from her, and she could not see if there were  
tears. "Why did she run away from me?" he moaned. "Couldn't she  
understand that even if I did wrong, I did it all for her? That  
even if I did a wrong against her, it was only because I loved   
her?"

A mingling of pity and disgust arose within her. She said  
nothing. The mirror turned clear as a window. Mikage trembled,  
than gasped out more words. "Why did she run into the flames?  
Didn't she know I'd follow? Did she think she could save them?   
And we were lost by that, both of us... they came for me as was  
just, but she stood in their way--"

Suddenly, he raised his hands up and slammed them down so  
hard on the shelf before his mirror that even Utena felt a shiver  
from the impact. His face was terribly twisted but somehow   
blank, as though he could not manage to express outwardly all  
that he was feeling within; as though he were a volcano sheathed   
in ice, boiling inside, but only just beginning to crack on the   
surface.

"Why couldn't she have loved me back?" he howled, and then  
he began to weep, brokenly, like a child abandoned in some dark,  
cold, loveless place.

The elevator slowed to a stop with a low, whining drone that  
faded finally to a shrill whistle, then died altogether. On the  
other side of the mirror, Mikage sobbed into his hands.

Utena stood calmly, opened the door, and stepped into the  
next room. There were three chairs, arranged in a triangular  
formation so that each seated person might look at the other two.  
But only one was occupied, by Mikage, who sat there weeping and  
rocking back and forth, with the two empty chairs standing there  
as though in accusation. Behind his head, light from the dank   
grey afternoon outside spilled through the high arched window and   
illumined him. Raindrops hit the panes like suicides.

"Tokiko... Mamiya..."

He spoke those two names, over and over again, as though all  
other vocabulary had been excised, as though those two names were   
the only language he had left to him. Compassion came upon her   
like a descending pillar of fire. Poor broken thing, she   
thought, trapped in memories, lost to hope, eternally young,   
eternally confused; the wound that will not heal, like that of  
Anfortas or Philoctetes. How could I ever have hated you?

The floor was black tile, and the walls were draped in white  
silk. She crossed it with quiet echoes of her shoes and a   
stately drifting sweep of skirts. Mikage did not even seem to  
notice her, not even when she placed her hand gently on the back  
of his neck--pushing aside his pale hair to do so--and simply  
left it there, not saying a thing, having nothing to say.

She thought of the battles in the sky. Of the black rose  
petals falling like dark snow, settling so softly upon red   
silhouettes. Mikage on his knees, sobbing into his hands.   
"Mamiya," over and over again. And she had just left. "I'm not  
like you," she had said then, coldly--she thought back to the   
sound of her voice with a bit of fear--and she'd taken Anthy by  
the hand and led her down the stairs. Calling back, sharply:   
"Keep the hell away from my friends, and from anyone else." And  
the next day... the next day he had been gone. From the school,  
from memory, from existence.

What if she had stayed? What if she had offered her hand to  
him, after beating him to his knees? Could he have helped her to  
understand? Could she have stopped him from fading away? 

She stood with her hand on his neck for a while, saying  
nothing. After a while, he took hold of her skirts, and began to  
sob into them, and she let him. He did that for a long time, and   
eventually he took a long breath as though swallowing his tears,   
looked up at her and asked, softly, disbelieving, "Tokiko?"

"No," she replied, equally soft. She touched his face, as  
though he were soft clay for her to mold. "I'm not her."

"I have to find her, you see," he said calmly. "She's in  
danger. Terrible danger. She's very wise and very clever, and  
strong, but she doesn't see."

Utena nodded, as though she knew, as though she'd always  
known. "What is it that you really want?" she asked softly. She  
looked down at him with gentle eyes; she hadn't realized before  
what a small man he was.

He thought upon it for a moment. "Not to hurt any more," he  
said finally.

She smiled, sadly. "I'm afraid that isn't possible."

"Forgiveness," he said after silence. He paused. "Love."

"Forgiveness is a kind of love." She took his hands in both  
of hers and drew him to his feet. "If you want to save the one  
you love, you'll have to seek her in the world outside this   
place. Are you brave enough to do that?"

He nodded, though he looked frightened. She led him to a  
door and opened it. A long set of stairs dusted with snow  
stretched beyond it, leading down to the winter-choked campus of  
Ohtori Academy. Bare trees and icy walkways.

"Snow takes a long time to disappear in this place," Mikage  
said softly.

She squeezed his shoulder once, watched him go through the  
door, then closed it gently behind him. She walked back to the  
chair in the centre of the room and sat down in it. She sat like  
that for a few minutes, then shook her head. What was she doing  
here? Himemiya was out there somewhere--she'd heard her voice,  
and she had to go to her. That was much more important than  
sitting on the lone chair of a dark room by herself, lost in a  
haze of shadowed thoughts.

She got up so fast that she nearly tripped on her untied  
shoelace. After cursing, she tied it back up, then hurried to  
the door, opened it up, and ran down the marble stairs towards   
the green spring grass and the budding trees.

* * *

The Ohtori family library took up two floors on the western wing  
of the manse, the upper connected to the lower by a winding  
spiral staircase of wrought iron, over a century old.   
Everything--floor, bookshelves, furnishings, and otherwise--was   
oak, heavy and dark and gleamingly polished. Throw rugs of dark  
blue and light grey dotted the floor, arranged in a seemingly  
chaotic pattern whose precise order would only have been visible  
to someone who could somehow observe them from the air. As that  
would have required that the top of the house be torn off, it was  
unlikely to happen any time soon.

Ohtori Hoshimi stood before the blaze in the great stone  
fireplace, sipped her mint tea, and tried to will herself warm  
with little success. Even with the fire, she could not escape  
the grip of the cold.

Two great arched windows flanked the fireplace. If things   
had been proper, they would have overlooked the winter-choked   
sight of the western gardens: the greenhouse, the beds where the  
roses would bloom in the summer, the desolation of the waterless   
marble fountain where the boy and the girl rode their dolphins   
beneath cloaks of snow. Things were not proper, however, and   
beyond the windows roiled a thick turgid sea-sky of red, the   
sight of which reminded her somewhat unpleasantly but entirely  
unsurprisingly of menstrual blood.

The marble mantelpiece was crowded with framed portraits.  
She picked up one taken a little over two years after Kanae's   
birth. Kanae was on her lap, a chubby little thing in a white  
dress with a happy smile; her husband stood behind her, tall and  
healthy, with his hand possessively placed upon her shoulder as  
he looked down at her and her daughter with a nearly insufferable   
expression of patriarchal pride.

This, she thought with a faint, bitter smile, ought to be  
the scene where the wicked queen, in the face of what has been  
unleashed, drops a single gleaming tear upon the portrait of her  
once-happy family, regrets all that she has done, and thinks back  
to happier times.

Suddenly, but quite calmly, she threw the portrait into the  
fire and turned away, dry-eyed, while the wooden frame burned and  
the glass cracked in the heat, and the arranged photograph inside  
curled and charred.

"Damn you, you fool," she said quietly, draining the last of  
her tea. From the left, the hum and squeak of her husband's   
electric wheelchair announced his approach--he had been on the  
other side of the library, at one of the long tables, consulting  
books.

"Will it abate soon?" he asked, a faintly whining tone to  
it. He was wearing his reading glasses, which magnified the  
flinty bleakness of his eyes.

"How am I supposed to know?" she asked sharply, turning away  
from him and staring back into the fire, where the portrait had  
been almost entirely consumed; if he'd observed her burning it,  
he did not deign to give it any notice. "You speak as though I   
planned for this to happen."

"For all I know, you did," he said. The whining wasn't even  
faint now. "I warned you that something like this might occur,  
you know. We shouldn't have--"

"Yes," she snapped, casting an angry glare back at him.   
"Yes, I am now quite aware of that. I knew he was unstable, but  
not like this. He's..." She took a deep breath. "He's insane,   
I think. I should have seen it coming. Dioscuri, Gemini, Libra;  
two sides of one. Take one away, and the balance is gone."

"That's all very good," he said with a sneer, "delightfully  
mystic and obtuse, but what can we do to _fix_ things?"

She sighed, and lost what little remained of her patience.   
"Oh, do shut up."

His eyes narrowed. "Don't speak to me like that, woman."

Ohtori Hoshimi drew her bandaged hand up to her chest, and  
rubbed the wrist. "Do you even realize how much I have always   
hated you, toothless old man?" she asked softly.

He opened his mouth, then closed it as she waved her injured  
hand at him dismissively. "Go to sleep," she told him. "Have   
dreams that frighten you. When you wake up, forget that we spoke   
like this."

His eyes closed and his head drooped; he slumped down in his  
wheelchair and began to drool on himself. She delicately removed  
his reading glasses and tucked them into the pocket of his robe,  
then wheeled him over into a corner and left him there before  
returning to stare out the window at the chaos, as though by  
doing so she could somehow bring order to it.

"Soon enough," she said out loud, as though the words would  
make it true, "you will grow bored with this. You will go back   
to sleep. Things will return to normal."

Three heavy thuds, as though with a sledgehammer, shook the  
double doors at the other end of the library. Perhaps it was  
merely coincidental that they followed her words; perhaps not.

"I am protected in here!" she called, despising how high and  
frightened and uncertain her voice sounded. "This place was long  
ago prepared--"

The doors began to splinter, and with them the entirety of  
the library; splintering, melting, dissolving, cracking, it was  
hard to say which. All and none, none and all.

Hoshimi shouted three words at the top of her lungs. Two of  
them she had made vows never to utter, and left her weeping with   
pain on the floor, with her bandaged hand soaked in blood and   
dripping onto the carpet. But the pain was good--the pain was an  
acknowledgement of her existence, the reality of her being. And  
nothing hammered at the doors any longer. Eventually, the pain   
went away enough that she could walk again, and she staggered to  
a heavy-limbed but well-padded chair and slumped into it with a   
groan. There were gauze and bandages on the nearby side table,   
and she carefully rebandaged her hand once the bleeding had   
stopped. In his wicker basket on the other side of the chair,   
Trivia meowed weakly and opened his blue eyes to gaze up at her.  
Idly, she drifted her uninjured hand down to stroke the Siamese   
between his ears. 

"They hurt you, didn't they, my beauty?" she whispered  
wearily. "The nasty, nasty things, they hurt my darling, and   
hurt me too, for you and I are one." The cat began to purr, and  
she smiled. "What's to become of us, pet? Our poor mad prince   
has wrecked the world, my sweet, turned everything upside down:  
'fair is foul and foul is fair'. But we're safe in our little  
shelter for now, aren't we?" Careful of his bandage-swathed   
front right paw, she lifted the cat into her lap. He lifted his  
head, and she dragged a finger down his chin to the vibrating   
muscles of his throat. "With luck, the red king and the white   
queen shall come together this time." Her smile tightened. "But  
if not, there are other ways. You tasted her blood, did you   
not?" Taking him under the shoulders, she raised his face up to   
hers and cooed at him as though he were an infant. "Wasn't she   
sweet, my precious? Wasn't she lovely beyond compare? Such a  
shame, that he kept her in a birdcage for so very long, with her  
wings clipped and her feathers plucked. Beautiful birds are   
meant to fly--" She paused, narrowing her eyes; simultaneously,  
Trivia hissed and bared his fangs.

"Don't do that," she said coldly. "You've been warned   
before." 

The Knight walked out slowly from the shadows of a high  
shelf and knelt before her. "I apologize, my lady. I did not  
want to interrupt the conversation."

"Take your mask off," she commanded, laying Trivia back in  
his basket. The Knight did as he was told, and she regarded  
the pale, icy-eyed face with the same aesthetic pleasure as a  
sculptress might. "Tell me what sights you have seen," she said   
softly, casually laying her right foot up on his left shoulder,   
"tell me what places you have been..."

She was still wearing the new heels she'd purchased for the   
gallery opening, glossy black. The Knight pulled it off, laid it  
gently on the floor, and softly pressed his lips to her instep  
through the thin covering of her hose. She sighed softly, mildly  
regretting that the need to speak necessitated the removal of his  
lips.

"I have wandered," he began, "through the stirrings of the  
mind's night, the writhings of the night's mind..."

* * *

Once again, drawn as though by some gentle hook, she found   
herself back at the greenhouse. The door was still opening; the  
watering-can was where she'd left it. There was still no sign   
whatsoever of the boy.

She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, and, for  
want of something to do, picked up the watering-can and began  
giving her attentions to the bushes that looked as though they  
needed them.

Once again, she wondered who cared for this garden in the  
real world. Did Akio do it himself, perhaps? She could not  
imagine that, but somehow...

Akio... the time in the elevator and the bell-tower were  
already like dreams, half-remembered, vague gatherings of imagery  
like scooped handfuls of jewels. One elevator ride, or two? Up  
or down? And who had she spoken to? Herself in mirror, a mirror  
in herself, a mirror of herself?

She started as the faintest of screams reached her ears, so   
indistinct that she thought at first she'd imagined it. But then  
it came again, and she recognized it. Anthy; Anthy was   
screaming, somewhere far away. All other concerns were entirely   
forgotten. The watering-can clattered and spilled its contents   
on thirstless stones as she dropped it and ran to the other side   
of the greenhouse, the direction in which the screams were coming  
from. 

Anthy screamed again, much closer, impossibly closer for the  
distance she'd travelled from how faint the screams had been   
before. Or perhaps Anthy was simply screaming louder. But where  
was she? Utena cast her head around, desperate to hear Anthy   
again so that she had some idea of how to locate her, and at the   
same time hoping not to hear another cry of pain. Everywhere   
were the rose bushes, long-thorned and blood-red. They had  
conquered the confines of their basins and beds, and spilled out  
long leafy tangles of thorny limbs that drifted like seaweed   
across the greenhouse floor. Clothes, she saw with fearful   
nausea, were caught upon the thorns, clothes that she recognized:   
Ohtori's short-skirted uniform, the red gown of the Rose Bride, a  
crimson dress that she'd seen both hanging loose on a small girl  
and stretched tight over the long-limbed voluptuous body of a   
grown woman. And there was a blue sweater that Anthy had   
particularly liked, bought for her birthday a few years ago, torn  
like all the rest upon the cruel hooked claws of the roses,   
stained with sap and blood.

A soft, horrified "What is this?" escaped her lips, and then  
the what of it ceased to matter, because Anthy screamed again, so  
loud that the sound seemed to be coming from right below her   
feet, under the soil of the rose bed. Because, she realized, it   
was; the muffled quality, no matter how loud, made that crystal  
clear. Anthy was somewhere below her, trapped and suffering.   
She seized the closest shovel and dealt a few smashing blows to  
the flimsy fence ringing the rose bed, then ripped it out in two  
pieces and hurled it aside. Rose vines were clustered so thickly   
in the bed that she could hardly see the earth at all; grimly,   
she raised the shovel high, and brought it down in a series of  
repetitive chops, as though it were an axe. Severed vines were  
roughly kicked aside to give her room, and the blade of the   
shovel was soon sticky with the juice of vine and petal. Sweet  
cloying scents filled the air. 

Gritting her teeth, Utena began to hurl great shovelfuls of   
rich dark earth behind her. Anthy wasn't screaming any longer,   
and she didn't know if that was good or bad. The digging   
perversely seemed to become easier as she went, and soon enough   
she was six feet under, with barely enough room to use the   
shovel, filthy from head to toe with dirt and sweat. Earth and   
small pebbles rained down on her with each scoop, as some hurled  
dirt always failed to quite clear the lip of the deepening pit.

As she paused for a moment to wipe her brow and rest her  
aching arms, someone called her name. "Utena-sama!"

Too tired from digging to be startled, she looked up. There  
were two young girls--thirteen or fourteen--looking down into the  
pit, from a good twenty feet above her. She hadn't realized she  
had dug herself so deep. Through the distant glass ceiling of   
the greenhouse, she could see that already it was dusk, and the  
stars were coming out.

"What are you doing, Utena-sama?" called the first one,  
pigtails dangling over her shoulders as she peered down.

"I'm digging," Utena explained.

"You'd better stop, Utena-sama," the second advised.

"Can't," Utena said apologetically, and went back to   
digging. "Anthy's down here, and she needs me."

"Utena-sama!"

She didn't look up. "What?"

"Do you know what an angler fish is, Utena-sama?"

"Nope." Her shovel blade scraped wood. She knelt and began  
with her hands to clear the dirt away from the coffin lid.

The second girl sounded worried. "Really? You don't?"

"Should I?" The work went surprisingly quickly; soon, she   
had exposed the lid in its entirety, well-varnished oak with the  
crest of the rose upon it, slippery beneath her scrabbling   
fingers.

"Well, yes," the first girl said, and sighed.

A shower of loose earth hit Utena in the back of her head.   
She cried out, and looked up in time to see the silvery glint of the  
two girls' shovels, rising and falling, before another shower   
forced her to close her eyes as it smacked into her forehead.

"Stop that!" she yelled, or tried to, cut off halfway  
through by the rich musty earth hurled from above entering her  
mouth. She fell to her knees, choking and spitting to clear it,   
as shoveled dirt rained down upon her.

"We're really very sorry about this," said the first one,  
not sounding sorry at all.

"We quite liked you. You made a wonderful heroine. The  
combination of strength and weakness, power and vulnerability,  
confidence and doubt, femininity and masculinity..."

"But there's been more than enough trouble already, and the  
way things are going, you might wake him up all the way."

"And we really can't have that. It will be difficult to  
work things without you. The heartless knight was quite right  
about you being the central figure. You're a bit like the axis  
of a wheel."

"Ooh, a simile! How do you think things will go after   
this?"

"Well, someone else will just have to step into the role."

"But who? Who... who can possibly fill the shoes of Utena-  
sama?"

"Don't swoon. Her shoes aren't that big."

"Her _metaphorical_ shoes."

"Ooh, a metaphor! What about... what's her name... you know  
who I mean, right?"

"Her? No, that wouldn't work out at all."

"Why not? Don't you know what they say, that everyone has a  
prince inside them?" 

"Yes, but although all princes are created equal, some are  
created more equal than others."

"The hole's filled now."

"Pat the earth down."

"You've got the seeds?"

"Of course. Would you like to plant them?"

"Can I?"

"Sure, go right ahead."

"Will they grow quickly?"

"No, very slowly. But they'll be terribly beautiful when   
they do blossom. This is the best kind of soil for growing  
lovely flowers in."

* * *

Oh, darkness, oh great soft envelopment of darkness, oh wondrous  
gentle overspreading of sable wings, oh grand, glorious,   
flowering canopy of night, enfold and cradle and rock us into   
this, the endless sleep in this our wooden womb. As we are born  
of dust in the belly of woman, in the darkness and safety, so   
shall we go down into the belly of Mother Earth in shadowy and  
floral-scented dust...

And the hymn to darkness faded, and, faintly, as through   
thin walls, came music, horn and cello and organ and voice.  
"Den tod niemand zwingen kunnt bei allen menschenkinden, das  
macht alles unsre s�nd, kein unschuld war zu finden. Davon kam  
der tod so bald und nahm �ber uns gewalt, hielt uns in seinem  
reich gefangen."

Oh, Utena thought, lovely music, lovely music singing the  
kingdom of death in foreign tongue, please, let me be no nearer  
in dream's death-kingdom, let me wear such deliberate disguises,  
boy's coat, princeskin, crossed swords; oh, if only I might be a  
winged bird, and fly from this place.

If only we might all be birds!

(for birds, you see, can fly away from everything)

"No one can overcome death, of all humans; it caused our   
sins, there was no innocence to be found. From there death came  
so soon and gained power over us, kept us prisoner in its   
kingdom."

"Don't open it," she whispered, curling up as much as she  
could in her confinement, raising rose-petals to her mouth and  
nose in the trembling hollow of her hands. "Please, don't open   
it." Breathe in the fragrance though she might, she could not be   
rid of the taste and smell of soil, of dirt full of worms and rot   
and shit, of all the fragile, terrible, temporal things of the   
earth returning to the earth. 

The lid of the coffin slid aside and dim light cut into her  
eyes. She squinched them shut with a whimper and buried her face  
in the rose petals.

"That's quite enough of that," someone said, firmly but not  
unkindly. "You're going to need to come out of there, because  
they're waiting for you."

"I'm dead," she informed the voice calmly. "They bury you  
when you're dead, in a coffin. Put the dirt on top of you. Pat  
it down and plant flowers." She paused. "So go away."

The man--it was a man, a deep-voiced man who she guessed   
from the rather gravelly tones to be a heavy smoker--sighed  
quietly. "Haven't you realized yet that you can't die in this  
place? It's all just a dream. None of it's real. Except  
possibly you." He seemed to think about it for a moment. "Oh,  
definitely you. So come out of there."

"All right," she said, somewhat suspiciously. "As long as  
I'm not dead."

"You're not."

She clambered somewhat awkwardly out of the coffin,   
receiving his offered hand with mild gratitude, and placing her  
feet carefully on the wooden floor. The man was tall and   
powerfully built, gray-haired, and wore a black priest's jacket.  
The white collar gleamed in the dimly-lit interior of the church  
like a wound opening on bone.

"You're..." She cocked her head to the side and frowned,  
trying to think of the name--they'd been introduced some days  
earlier.

"Ohtori Taiyoji," he said. "Father Ohtori. This is my   
church." He paused, and stared up at the high ceiling. The  
candelabra placed on the closed lid of the next coffin over   
flickered, and light capered in the gold chalice on the altar   
against the far wall. "I mean, this is where I came for   
services when I was a young man. Before I left the city." His  
voice was suddenly dreamy; a smile was creeping onto his bluff  
face. "But I keep coming back; I always keep on coming back."

"You're the real chairman's brother, right?" Utena asked,  
looking around warily. Rain was softly hitting the tall stained-  
glass windows on the flanking walls. To the left was a young man  
pierced by arrows--the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The right,  
a white dove over a blue sea--the spirit of God upon the face of  
the waters.

"I am," Ohtori Taiyoji answered. "Would you like to hear a  
story?"

"Sure," she said with a sigh, leaning back against the  
coffin she'd been lying in. "First, though, tell me something."

He looked at her expectantly, but said nothing.

"This is all a dream, right?" she asked slowly. He nodded,  
and she continued. "I'm the only real thing in it?" Again, he  
nodded. "So, you're not real?"

"No, I'm not real," he said, not seeming at all bothered by   
the fact. "Anyway, the story goes like this. Once upon a time  
a phoenix was flying over one of the southern islands, when she  
heard the most pitiful weeping that any ears had ever heard.   
Descending on her flaming wings, she found a young prince crying  
over the body of his sister beside a small pool in a grove of  
bamboo. Her body bore the mark of many blades. Questioned by   
the phoenix, the prince related the sad tale of how he had   
returned to their small cottage in the grove--some distance from  
the pool--and discovered his sister slain. Long ago, before they  
had passed away, his mother and father had told him that the   
waters of the pool had healing powers. And even though this was  
simply the kind of story that parents tell to their children when  
they are very young, the prince had grown up believing it, and  
come almost to manhood with the assurance in mind that should  
anything terrible ever befall him or his sister, all that one  
would have to do was wash the other in the healing pool, and all  
would be well again. So, for many hours now, he had been bathing  
the body of his sister in the pool, and though it had washed all  
the blood away, as water will do even if it has no magic healing  
powers, she was still cold and dead, and was in fact beginning to  
stiffen and smell a little bad."

"I don't think those kind of details are really necessary in  
a story," Utena said softly, with some distaste.

"It's not my story," Father Ohtori said, sounding slightly  
offended. "I'm just telling it." He paused reflectively, taking  
a few seconds to slip back into the storytelling voice. "The  
phoenix took pity on the poor prince, who was so innocent and  
trusting that he couldn't understand why the pool wasn't bringing  
his sister back to life. She explained to him that water could  
only bring the dead to life once, and that had already happened  
once before, for you are dead until you are born, and we are  
all born in the waters of our mother's wombs. The magic fire  
from the heart of the sun was needed if she was to be brought  
back to life for a second time. Upon being told that, the prince  
began to weep, lamenting that, unlike the phoenix, he did not  
have wings with which to fly to the heart of the sun, and even if  
he did, he could not leave the body of his sister alone. The  
phoenix stroked away the tears on his face with her beak, and  
told him three secrets: the first was how he might fly to the  
heart of the sun, the second was how he might do so while still  
protecting the body of his sister, and the third secret, the   
prince never told to anyone. First of all, as per the second  
secret, he cut off his shadow, and instructed it to remain  
behind and guard his sister. Secondly, as per the first secret,  
he went back to the cottage in the company of the phoenix, struck  
off her head with an axe, plucked out her feathers and made a  
cloak of them, then roasted her body on a spit and ate her.   
After that, full of power from the eating of the flesh of the  
phoenix, he put on the cloak he had made from her feathers, and  
flew off towards the sun to retrieve the magic fire that brings  
the second life, while his shadow remained behind to guard the  
body of his sister.

"But was that really such a good idea?"

Utena started as though waking from a deep sleep when the  
story was finished. "I don't know if it was a good idea or not,"  
she said finally. "I mean, is that the end of the story?   
Nothing really got resolved. Did the prince find the magic fire,  
or not?" She frowned deeply. "And why did the phoenix let him   
kill her like that?"

Father Ohtori thought about for a moment. "Are you  
familiar with the story of the scorpion and the frog?"

"Oh. I see," she said dully. "It was in her nature."

"Exactly." He picked up the candelabra and began to walk  
towards a heavy wooden door at a far corner of the church.   
"Come with me, please."

Utena followed him, passing by the two unopened coffins with  
only a single backward glance. 

"Who's in those other two coffins?" she asked, as he grasped  
the iron ring and pulled the door wide.

"Stones," he explained. "They're full of stones."

"Why?"

"To weight them down, of course," he explained slowly, as   
one might to a beloved but slightly obtuse child. He held out  
the long-armed candelabra to her. Beyond the open doorway, a  
long flagstone passageway stretched away to the terminus of the  
light cast by the slender, flickering white-wax candles. "I  
can't go with you past this point, so you'll need to take this to  
see your way."

Utena reached out for it, then hesitated. "What about you?  
Aren't you going to need a light?"

Outside, lightning struck nearby, and the searing flash   
briefly hurled jagged knives of colour through the church's  
interior as it passed through the panes of the stained-glass.  
"I'll have enough here," he said, holding it out to her again.  
"Go on, take it."

She grasped the candelabra beneath its three branching arms,  
nodded politely to Father Ohtori, and stepped into the corridor.  
After a few steps, he called her name, gently, and she paused and  
looked back at him.

"Tenjou-san," he repeated. "The most important thing to  
understand is this. Stories, in the end, are only words, and  
words have the power to change nothing. Because of this, they  
have the power to change everything."

"You don't--and I don't mean this in a negative way, because  
you seem like a nice guy--seem much like a priest to me."

He nodded. "It comes of not being real, or so I   
understand." Calmly, he unfurled his large shabby umbrella   
overhead, and began to close the door. "Take care, Tenjou-san.   
And hurry--they're waiting."

"Who's waiting?" she asked. But the door had already banged  
closed, and latched. "Hey! Hey, answer me!" She had begun to   
stride back towards the door when she heard Anthy scream again,  
from down the other end of the corridor; she spun on her heel   
immediately and dashed towards the sound, so fast that the flames  
of the candelabra, caught by the wind of her passage, trailed  
past her face like gorgon's hair. She ran by picture-frames of  
carved wood and polished brass which held watercolours she had no  
time to look at. "Anthy!" she called desperately, as her  
footsteps pounded like hammers on the flagstones. "Anthy, hold  
on, I'm coming!"

The corridor, she realized as she ran, sloped downward, so   
gradually as to be almost unnoticeable. But each step, each  
movement of her legs to send her hurtling towards Anthy's distant  
cries, carried her deeper into... what?

Up ahead, she heard a faint ding, and the shush of elevator  
doors opening. She tried to pull up short, but her momentum was  
such as to make that impossible; in the end, she only managed to  
stop herself by throwing out her free hand against the elevator  
wall as she rushed into it. Even as she turned back, the doors  
slammed shut, and the elevator groaned and began to descend.   
There was no control panel and no floor indicator, just two doors  
of gleaming steel sealed so tight the seam was barely visible,  
and three plush red walls. The candles in the candelabra had  
gone out, so she set it down on the floor, folded her arms,  
leaned back against the wall opposite the doors, and sighed  
gently.

"Okay," she said to herself slowly. "Let's try and look at  
this rationally. Akio woke something up and used it to destroy  
one of those shadows. But because of that, something happened to  
me. Maybe not just to me... maybe to the world. But what?" She  
paused. "Go back to the beginning. There has to be some way to  
make sense of all this. You woke up thinking of spring. So--"

The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Kaoru Kozue  
stepped on, thirteen years old and wearing Ohtori's school  
uniform.

"Kozue-chan..." Utena said quietly. The doors closed, and  
the elevator started moving down again. 

Kozue fixed her with a vaguely imperious glare. "I always  
wondered why you called me that. You never called anyone else  
that." She smirked. "No one else had called me Kozue-chan for  
years, not even Miki. What gave you the right to be so familiar  
with me?"

Utena blinked. "Well, I mean, you're Miki's little sister,  
and..."

"Miki's older than me by about eight minutes," Kozue said  
with affectionate contempt. She shook her head. "I think I  
could almost feel sorry for you, you know. You remind me of   
Miki, so fixed on something shining in the distance that you've   
no sight of the ground beneath your feet." Suddenly, she   
coughed. "Excuse me for a moment." She turned away, partially  
hiding her face, and reached up to cover her mouth. She coughed  
again, into her hand, and then tossed a small, flopping, silver-  
scaled fish onto the floor.

"You know why they fill coffins with stones?" Kozue asked,  
straightening up and combing her hair back into place with her  
fingers.

"No. Why?"

"To weigh them down for burial, so the pallbearers actually  
have to make an effort when there's no body."

"Why would you bury coffins without a body in them?"

Kozue gave her a look that declared her to be a total idiot.   
"For those who've lost their bodies in the sea, of course."

Utena bowed her head, unable to bear the sight any longer.  
The only sound for a while was the dying fish's convulsions on  
the elevator's tile floor, a weakening series of wet slaps.

"I'm sorry, Kozue-chan," she said eventually. Her eyes  
itched, and suddenly tears were spilling down her cheeks;   
finally, it was simply too much, even if this was all a dream and  
she was the only real thing in it. If you could cry for   
people in books, who had never been real at all, then surely it  
was all right to cry for those in dreams who had once been real.  
"I'm so sorry."

"Why?" Kozue asked softly, sounding genuinely curious.

"Because you're dead. Because Kanae-san is dead. Because I  
wasn't strong enough, then or now, and everyone seems to be  
relying on me, but I'm not strong, I'm very weak, and I'm so  
scared, I don't know what to do..."

Kozue, with almost infinite delicacy, reached out and   
touched her left temple. Her fingers were long and light and  
agile, as befitted a pianist, even one who would no longer play.  
"Don't be stupid," she said. "Why try to bear anyone else's   
weight? The only one you have a responsibility to is yourself."

The elevator stopped moving, and she drew away. "I've got  
business on this floor," she said, brisk and dismissive, the  
almost-kindness gone. The doors opened on a garden in autumn,   
where the trees were all afire with their dying. Wind ripped a  
few leaves free from the nearest tree, a maple, and sent them  
spinning into the elevator, where they fell upon and covered the   
now-dead fish.

Utena stepped forward. "Can I--"

Kozue's eyes narrowed suddenly, and Utena remembered in a  
flash two things she'd said long ago: that she was nothing like  
Miki, and that she was a wild animal. Her arm shot out like a  
spear-thrust, and her open palm hit Utena in the chest so hard   
that she was slammed back against the elevator wall like a rag   
doll.

"No," she said severely, as Utena gasped and tried to draw  
breath, half-crumpled on the floor, "you can't." She walked out  
into the garden, and the doors shut solidly behind her. Once  
again, the elevator went down. Utena lay against the wall, her  
earlier tears mingling with those brought on by the pain of  
Kozue's blow.

"Hits hard for a dead girl," she gasped, and then, somewhat   
to her shock, she began laughing through her tears. "I hate this  
dream. I hate being the only real thing. I want to wake up."

(you're not the only real thing)

The elevator halted, and the doors dinged. Utena clambered  
painfully to her feet. It hurt to breathe. She staggered out  
into the oak-panelled corridor, passed beneath the hanging  
chandelier that gave off swaying light, heading for the door at  
the other end, which was ash-wood bound in iron.

(it took you a long time, but you found the way to me)

She seized the cold handle with both hands, twisted, and  
pulled the door open.

(it's time for us to meet)

* * *

Order loves order, and craves to perpetuate itself. Thus the  
turn of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, the wax and  
wane of the moon, the symmetry of man and woman, of five fingers  
on one hand and two eyes in one head, of mosaic and mathematics  
and pentameter. Sunlight through glass fragments at Ravenna is  
sunlight on the gardens of Ispahan. The compass measures the   
angles of a bridge and the curves of a lover's thighs. The spear  
stirring the primal waters is the sword dividing earth from sky   
is the pestle of the heavens pounding the mortar of the land is  
the hand is the shadow of God is the light where no light has   
ever before been is the flint-toothed sickle wielded.

Smart cooks add salt to boiling water, in order that it boil  
faster. The concept is one of condensation nuclei. Gathering  
points.

One lives by memories. To protect them. To overcome them.  
To surpass them. To regain them. Memory, where the self hides  
from the mindless malign entropy of the universe, which gropes  
blindly like an old man in darkness in its attempts to make all  
into one again.

A man came walking down a dark street in the summer, and his  
head was full up with memories. The first way to go on living   
when the world is torn apart is love. The second is hate. Love,  
like water, spreads out and transforms the world; hate, like a   
prison, draws the world into itself and also transforms it.

A man came walking, and the air was full of summer, of   
youth. The faint twinges of guitar strings. The echoing passage  
of the white-plastered walls. Balconies overhead casting their  
shadows in succession upon narrow streets.

A man came walking, and up ahead was a building being born,  
rough white stucco walls and wooden window-slats and overlooking  
balconies and a portico and a patio, and a sign, a wooden sign  
swaying in the breeze that blows off from the salt-sea, a   
weathered wooden sign creaking back and forth, with a red rose,  
new-bloomed upon it. 

LA ROSA ROJA

He swung the door wide, and, inside was the long wooden bar  
and the heavy round tables, the dance floor with the phantom  
imprint of thousands of feet, the stage for the singers and the  
musicians, the long racks behind the bar for the rainbow of glass  
bottles, the pictures on the walls, the stairs that wind up to   
the second floor, the door that leads out to the long, long walk  
down the alleyway into the darkness beyond where the swords rise  
and fall, where the rose-petals clatter to the tessellated floor.

He took a seat at a corner table. He found a drink in his  
hand. A ring on his finger. A tear rolled down his withered  
cheek like the water of life. He heard footsteps from beyond,  
from outside. They were coming. The Red Rose. A point of  
convergence. La Rosa Roja. Prison and palace, sanctuary and  
cell. They were coming. He could hear their footsteps. Calmly,  
patiently, he took a sip of his drink.

* * *

The room beyond was small but pleasant, well-lit--not by natural   
light, but by soft fluorescents. Bookcases lined the walls  
like a ring of guardians, and Utena's eyes flicked over the  
titles: the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen and  
and Charles Perrault, and there was the same translated edition  
of Steinbeck's Arthurian retellings that she'd had as a child;   
there, cheek-to-cheek like affectionate brothers, were Oz and   
Wonderland, complete boxed sets in English (she remembered,   
suddenly, vivid as the taste of gourmet food, running one small  
child's hand down the spines of those exact same editions in a  
bookshop, and the other hand was in the hand of her father), and  
there was Eliot's poetry side-by-side with Japanese translations  
of the three great Greek tragedians--Aeschylus, Sophocles,  
Euripides--who held company with their opposite and complement,  
Aristophanes, with his frogs and clouds. And there were other   
books, so many books, an impossibility of books for such a small  
room, with pride of place given to a complete Shakespeare edition  
that ran one entire shelf in the bookcase facing the door, each  
individual play in a separate red binding with its title   
lettered in gold.

The woman seated at the easel in the centre of the room had  
her back to Utena, and was humming softly to herself as she  
painted, something gentle that sounded like a lullaby. Her hair,  
pale to begin with, had turned almost pure white, and fell down  
past her hips, pulled back into a loose tail by a ribbon cinched  
round it at the base of her neck.

"Just leave the tea on the table by the door, Kumozo," she  
said distantly. She sounded distracted; the brush in her hands   
moved in long, bold, steady strokes across the canvas. "I'll   
have it when I finish this."

Utena just stared. The woman seemed to expect the lack of  
response, did not turn, and went on with her brush-strokes, even  
and steady as the pounding of the surf. 

"Kanae-san," she managed finally.

Ohtori Kanae did not start or appear surprised by the  
unexpected voice, but simply finished the brush-stroke she'd been  
in the middle of, then slowly turned on her stool and greeted  
Utena with a pleasant, slightly vacant smile. It was, Utena  
though, remarkable how a woman so far into her pregnancy could  
perch so easily on a little artist's stool like that.

"Oh," she said, absently dipping her brush into water and  
cleaning it on a rag before laying it aside on the easel shelf,  
"you're... Tenjou Utena-san, right?"

"Kanae-san," Utena repeated, feeling not so much astonished  
as simply profoundly numb. 

"Yes, that's me," Kanae said slowly, still smiling. She   
dropped the hand that had held the brush down to the rounded   
swell of her pregnant belly beneath her loose-fitting red dress,  
an unconscious protective gesture. "Would you like to have some  
tea?" She looked about doubtfully. "I do believe there was  
supposed to be tea."

Utena looked to the side. On a little table next to her,   
there was a fresh pot of herbal tea, steam rising from the blue   
china spout, and two cups. "Umm, yes. I'd like some tea."

Kanae beamed. "It's so nice to see a new face. We can take  
it in the solarium." She got off the stool, slowly but surely,  
and, still holding her hand over her belly, headed towards a door  
in one wall that Utena hadn't noticed. "Bring the tea, if you  
could, please."

"Sure," Utena said, picking up the tray and moving after   
her. 

Kanae put her free hand on the doorknob, then paused,   
seeming to realize something, and looked back. "By the way," she  
asked slowly, and a little hesitantly, "you're not here to hurt  
the baby, are you?" The light in the room seemed to dim at her  
words, and Utena felt a sudden sense of impending pressure, as  
though suddenly she was aboard an airplane dropping like a   
wounded bird towards the waves.

"I'd never hurt your baby, Kanae-san," she said gently, "I'd  
never hurt anyone's baby." 

Kanae beamed. "Oh, that's good. I just have to make sure,  
you see." She opened the door and stepped through, closing it  
almost all the way behind her. "Please join me when you're  
ready."

Tea-tray in hand, quite certain she could remain sane if she  
simply focused on the present, and none of its implications,   
Utena paused to look at the incomplete canvas Kanae had been   
working. At first, it looked entirely abstract, full of precise  
but meaningless slashes of colour; but then, as the eye adjusted   
to it, just as the eye adjusts to night, a shape emerged, a tall  
black-clad shape with a white face pale as the moon, lifting a  
gold-quilloned sword in its left hand, the blade like a tongue  
of fire turned into steel, and in the right hand it dangled a  
naked, dark-skinned, pale-haired child by the ankles. The image,  
once revealed, was vivid and clear as a photograph; Utena could  
not bear to look at it for long, and, turning away, she edged the  
door to the solarium open with her foot and stepped inside after  
Kanae.

The solarium was a high-ceilinged pentagonal room whose  
walls were constructed entirely of glass, except for the one   
with the door through which they'd entered. Beyond them were  
grasslands, rolling hills with rivers cleaving through them, and  
mountains in the distance. The sun was overhead, with fat white  
clouds drifting about it. Within, the air of the solarium was  
warm and natural and soothing.

"Come sit down," Kanae offered. She had seated herself on  
the far edge of a long padded bench on the opposite side of the  
room, her back pillowed against several piled cushions. There   
was a small round table near the bench, and Utena put the tea  
down on it and sat down, close to Kanae, but not too close.

"How...?" she began, looking around.

"How what?" Kanae asked with a smile. 

"This room... aren't we... underground?"

"Of course we're underground," Kanae said, as though it were  
the most obvious thing in the world. "It's the safest place to   
be. Why do you think bomb shelters are built underground?"

"But--" Utena gestured around at the world beyond the  
glass, at the dust-motes moving in the sunlight. "All this--" 

Kanae laughed, a pleasant, somewhat childish sound, and  
suddenly leaned in almost disturbingly close. "Close your   
eyes," she advised, and her smile was that of a little girl  
delighting in doing something slightly naughty, sharing a secret  
she wasn't supposed to. "Listen carefully."

After a moment, Utena did. At first, she heard nothing,   
but, as the still silence continued (Kanae, she realized, was  
holding her breath, and so was she), the faint sound of humming,  
of some vast mechanic engine moving distantly, became audible.

"Do you hear that?" Kanae asked after perhaps a minute.

Utena nodded, and opened her eyes. "A projector, right?"

Kanae nodded. "It shows me the sun," she said slowly.  
"Whenever I want, it shows me the sun, and it's just as real as  
real, so as long as I'm never going to go outside into it   
anyway--it's dangerous, you see, to go outside, because there are  
so many people who want to hurt my baby--what does it matter?  
It's just as good as though it were real." She paused for a   
moment. "Akio-san built it for me, because I told him once that  
one of the only things I missed down here was the sun."

"How long have you been down here, Kanae-san?"

Kanae answered instantly. "Oh, since after the wedding  
night. We knew, you see, knew right away that I was going to  
have a baby, but we also knew that if anyone found out--  
especially _her_--they'd try and hurt the baby, so it was   
important that I stay in a safe place until everything was   
all right."

"So you and Akio-san are married now?"

Kanae nodded. "It was a secret ceremony. Once everything's  
safe for me in the world outside, he says we'll have a big public  
celebration." She beamed. "And I shall have the most beautiful  
dress in all the world, with seed pearls and gold embroidery."

Staring into Kanae's happy face and slightly absent eyes,  
Utena realized with pity and terror that the woman was quite  
assuredly the most insane person she had ever met.

"I'm not, you know," Kanae said. She poured them tea and  
handed Utena a cup in an almost motherly gesture. "That's what  
they're all thinking. Particularly Mother. But I'm saner than  
almost anyone else."

Utena just slowly nodded. All right, she thought vaguely;   
Kanae-san can read my thoughts. "Kanae-san, when you said that   
people would try to hurt the baby, did you mean--"

"That _sister_ of his," Kanae snarled, lovely face twisting  
into a vicious parody of itself. Somehow, she managed to load  
"sister" with so much invective that it became the most terrible  
insult in all the world. "That freak."

"Anthy isn't--"

Kanae's gaze hit her like an almost physical blow, so full   
of hate that it almost overflowed from her eyes. "She's a witch  
or an alien or a demon," she said, very calmly and coldly, each  
title pronounced precisely, "or possibly all three. But..." She  
paused, and her rage faded away into a beatific smile. "Somehow,  
I know I don't have to worry about her any more."

"Kanae-san--" Utena began gently.

"You should drink your tea," Kanae said, drinking hers. "It  
will get cold, otherwise."

Utena drank. "Kanae-san--"

The air was suddenly full of beeping. Kanae looked at the  
digital watch on her wrist and frowned. "Where has the time   
gone? Already?"

"Kanae-san..."

Kanae smiled at her, and it was somehow a smile like   
Anthy's, one that made Utena want to protect her from every hurt  
the world might give her and help her over every impediment in   
her path. "Utena-san, could you go and get a book for me from   
the other room? It's time to read to the baby."

"Sure," Utena said quickly, getting up and putting her tea  
down on the table. "Any book in particular?"

Kanae thought about it for a moment. "Today, I think, we'd  
like to read 'The Tempest', by Shakespeare." 

"Okay," Utena said, pulling open the door.

"Yesterday, we read Euripides' 'The Bacchae', but we didn't   
like it very much," Kanae called after her.

Out in the room beyond, Utena found "The Tempest" on the  
Shakespeare shelf, slipped it into her hands, and hurried back to  
the solarium. Back inside, Kanae was sitting up straighter,   
hands pressed flat against the glass, staring out at the long,  
leaping movements of a rabbit--an illusionary rabbit, Utena  
reminded herself vaguely--in the hills beyond.

"Kanae-san," she said, holding out the play like a peace  
offering, "about Anthy. I think you should--"

"Anthy, Anthy, Anthy," Kanae said, sounding vaguely annoyed,  
"that's always what you're thinking about. Like a metronome,   
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, underneath  
everything else, even when you don't realize it..." She started,  
turned around and dropped her hands from the window, and Utena  
saw that something had changed subtly in her face, realizing   
along with it that there was something different in her voice, an  
adoption of slightly deeper tones combined with slightly harsher  
and faster speech.

"Kanae-san, are you feeling all right?"

Kanae shook her head. "She went to sleep."

"Excuse me?" Utena asked, blinking and still holding out   
"The Tempest".

"Mother went to sleep," Kanae said, slowly and carefully as  
though in the hope that Utena would understand. "Which is  
probably best, since she's easily upset these days, and some of  
what we have to talk about might hurt her."

Utena dropped "The Tempest". It hit the floor with a heavy  
slap. "You're not Kanae-san," she said, almost unconsciously  
tensing to fight or run.

Kanae's body sighed gently. "Of course I'm not. Don't be  
silly. If I were, I'd be my own mother, which is, of course,  
impossible. It is possible to be your own grandfather, because  
I heard that in a song once, but not your own mother."

"Who are you?" Utena demanded. Puzzle pieces were snapping  
together in her mind. "It's you, isn't it? You're what Akio  
talked about--you're the revolution that's already happened. Yes,  
you did all this, wrecking the world, taking my friends away,   
even Anthy--"

"NO!" the child shouted from the mother's mouth, and the  
force of it nearly knocked Utena to her knees. "No," it said  
again, more gently, as she swayed and struggled to stand. "It  
wasn't me. It's not me. It's Setebos."

"Who are you?" Utena demanded again, this time firmly but  
trying to keep anger out of her voice. "Tell me your name."

"Cali," the child said. Utena tried to guess the gender,  
and settled on male because of the adoption of the deeper voice.

"Is that your whole name, or is it short for something?" she  
asked, forcing herself to be calm, and gentle, to remember that  
whatever else he was, he was still a child along with all of   
that.

"Short for several things," Cali said guardedly. "Why   
didn't you come?" he asked after a moment, and Kanae's body   
suddenly started to cry. "You were supposed to come. You're a  
prince. You were supposed to come save us, but you didn't, and  
so I had to try to do everything myself, but I didn't know how,  
and Setebos is here too, now, and Father..."

"I'm sorry," Utena said after a moment, sitting down beside  
Kanae and embracing her. Embracing, she realized, both of them  
at the same time. "I didn't understand. That was you, wasn't   
it? Calling out to me. In the bathroom, that it was dark and  
you were hungry, and you wanted me to help you. But I--"

"Mother's so scared," Cali whispered into Utena's shoulder  
in Kanae's voice. "It's like there's two parts of her, and the  
big part is happy and it loves me and it loves Father and it  
reads me stories and it paints, but there's this other part,  
there's this other part that's always _screaming_ and is scared  
all the time, and it's in every story and every painting, and I   
don't know what to do to help her, and I don't think Father knows  
about that other part of Mother, because he'd help her if he   
knew, wouldn't he?"

"Cali, can you tell me who Setebos is?" Utena asked softly.

"Setebos lives in the cold places," Cali whispered after a  
moment, and his voice was full of terror. "Setebos lives on the  
dark side of the moon. Setebos lives in the north, where there   
is ice. Setebos lives on the farthest shores, on the other end  
of the sea. Setebos lives in the west, where the Witch-Queen  
rules. Setebos made everything, but then he forgot about it, and  
everyone was safe because of that, but I made him remember, and  
Father--" Kanae's body suddenly pulled away from her and drew  
its arms about itself, one over her belly and one over her  
breasts. "Don't think about me like that," Cali snarled, glaring  
at Utena. "You're pitying me! Don't you dare pity me, I won't  
allow it--I'm not weak! I'm strong, and I'm going to help   
Mother, and Father too, and they'll both say what a good boy I   
am, what a smart boy I am--"

"Cali," Utena said, gently, but with steel in it, "I want to  
help them too. I want to help everyone. But I can't do it  
unless I understand, and I need you to help me understand. About  
Setebos, and about what happened to all my friends. Like Anthy."

"Mother hates her," Cali said quietly, almost viciously.  
"Both parts of Mother."

"But you don't, do you?" Utena smiled, and reached out to  
push some of Kanae's hair away from her tearful face. It was   
soft and very fine between her fingers. "How could you? You've  
never met her."

"I hate what Mother hates," Cali said after a moment.

"Yeah, but..." Utena struggled for the right words. "Cali.  
Your mother isn't well, right? You know that; that's why you  
wanted me to help you."

Kanae's head nodded, and Utena realized that the subtle  
change in the face was all in the eyes. They were like the eyes  
of the Duellists of the Black Rose. The _otherness_.

"So, maybe your mother is wrong to hate Anthy," Utena  
suggested. Something flashed in Kanae--in Cali's eyes, and Utena  
remembered suddenly that you could always, always start a fight   
on a playground by saying bad things about another kid's mother.  
"But we can talk about that later, if you want," she said   
quickly. "Why don't you tell me about Setebos?"

Kanae--Cali, Utena reminded herself again, the body is only  
a vessel--took a deep breath. "Okay," he said slowly. "But can  
we have some more tea first?"

"Sure," Utena said. "We can have more tea." The false sun  
warmed her bones as she poured for them. In a way, she could see  
Kanae's point; this was just like a real solarium, so long as you  
didn't wish to go outside it. But how could Kanae be happy with  
it, when she knew it all wasn't true? Did it make a difference,  
if you couldn't tell the difference, but only knew that one  
existed in an abstract, intellectual way?

Yes, she decided--it did. She just couldn't quite think of  
the right way to express how it did.

Cali carefully picked up the teacup in both of his mother's   
hands, raised it to his mother's lips, and slurped. Utena held  
back a shiver; atop everything else, somehow, seeing a grown  
woman drinking tea like a little child was profoundly disturbing.  
How much could he feel like this, Utena wondered, seeing through  
Kanae's eyes and moving her body as though it were his? Was it  
like a mask, or a marionnete? Could he taste the sharp herbal  
tea upon Kanae's palate? What did such a taste mean, to an   
unborn child? Where did Kanae go? Did she remember any of this,  
when her body wasn't her own?

He put the teacup down and wiped Kanae's lips on Kanae's  
sleeve. "In the beginning," he began, "there was the Quiet..."

END OF PART XIII


End file.
